Our International Student Ambassadors will tell you! They share their own stories of transitioning, studying, living, and achieving as international students at the University of Minnesota. Through their experiences, you can start to imagine your life studying at our prestigious university.

Social psychology is distinct from clinical, cognitive, counseling and quantitative psychology (among others). We do not become therapists from studying social psychology. Also, (unfortunately), social psychologists are not psychics.

Social psychologists study a variety of things, such as social cognition, emotion, subjective well-being, personality and social behavior, culture, decision-making and health behavior, stress and coping, prosocial behaviors, and interpersonal relationships.

My research topics are mainly in the field of prosocial and volunteer behaviors. Some of the questions my collaborators and I address are:

Why do people volunteer more in the US than in Norway?

When people ask each other for help, who do they ask?

When people receive help from others, how does it make them feel?

Are people who have suffered trauma more likely to help others?

I chose to come here to the U and study social psychology because I have a deep interest in people. I think about people all the time! Now I have a way to study them :)

If you have any questions about social psychology in particular or psychology in general, please ask me. I can answer most of your questions, except "What am I thinking about right now?"